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      Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Why did Congress invite him to speak? | Tamar Glezerman

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      To put it bluntly – Benjamin Netanyahu is the enemy of the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and of every person on this earth who values human life. He is also personally responsible for October 7. The fact that he spoke in Congress, with tens of thousands dead in Gaza and no hostage deal in sight, is an embarrassment to Congress and to every single representative who attended.When Netanyahu spoke to Congress, Congress should’ve walked out, not given him standing ovations. Even beyond the moral obvious, no dialogue should be had with this man for the same reason dialogue with Trump is a waste of time – all you’re ever going to get is another masterclass in gaslighting. And that is exactly what this speech was – from craven lying about the death toll in Gaza to craven lying about his attempts to free the hostages – A smorgasbord of craven lying, which congress, for some reason, could not stop applauding.But if dialogue with Netanyahu must occur – there is only one question to be asked – it’s not about the hostages – why give him another chance to pretend he cares for the people whose return he is actively preventing? It’s not about the Palestinians being killed in tens of thousands and displaced in millions – he just told you they are not. That what you see, you did not see.No, the question is biblical and it is – have you murdered and also inherited? Asked of Achav after he and Jezebel his wife murdered Navot to steal his vineyard. This question comes to say – How dare you? How dare you profiteer from a war you’re causing? How dare you shed crocodile tears for citizens you abandoned to get slaughtered, abused and kidnapped, and are now letting die, if not actively killing, in Gaza? How dare you use the blood on your hands to prolong your death grip on power?And there is so much blood on Netanyahu’s hands it is up to his neck. He is practically drowning in it. The blood of my aunt Hannah Kritzman, who was 88 years old when she was murdered in Be’eri by Hamas. The same Hamas Netanyahu funded and then ignored warnings about.The blood of tens of thousand Gazan civilians and who knows how many more under the rubble and the blood of the dead hostages who could’ve come home with a deal. Unfortunately, blood is Netanyahu’s sustenance – it keeps his career alive.I am an Israeli peace and anti occupation activist, living in New York. My family lives in Tel Aviv and I have some friends in Gaza. Since this war started, I’ve been organizing vigils and protests for ceasefire and hostage deal with a group called Israelis for Peace NYC. The first vigil was a little after I returned to NY from my aunt’s shiva – my entire belief system is based around a rejection of revenge politics, a striving for reconciliation and a dogged, relentless, choosing of hope over fear and anger. But there are exceptions – in some cases anger, like pain, serves as an indication that we are actively being hurt. Sometimes, anger is necessary, especially when dealing with a pathologically lying narcissist. Without it, we might confuse him pissing on our legs for rain.Because the sad truth is that the Israeli people have been mistreated by the Netanyahu family almost consecutively since 1996, when he was voted in less than a year after Rabin, whose murder he incited, was shot dead, and with him the two-state solution, (at least until now).At the time, I was just a kid, but I grew up in a leftist household, had already been in a bombing that killed 13 people, and learned that revenge only brings more revenge and that Palestinian self determination is not only a moral imperative, but also the only way to stop this blood cycle. So I knew what I was looking at as I watched Netanyahu replace Shimon Peres in the lead on election night in 1996 – I was looking at the starting pistol go off in the final race to the bottom. I was looking at the death rattle of hope. Since then we’ve hit rock bottom again and again, only to hear, as the Russian proverb says, knocks coming from below.Nine months after the rockiest bottom yet, Netanyahu has come to the US to pretend to speak for the Israeli people, the same people he is sacrificing in order to stay in power, and lie that continuing this horrifying war is in our interest.In reality, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting Netanyahu even before the war. My 88 year old aunt was one of them. She would protest from her golf cart, the same golf cart she was later murdered on. And Israelis are still out on the streets every single night, getting arrested and beaten up for simply demanding a hostage deal and an end to this war.In reality, 72% of Israelis think Netanyahu should resign.So Netanyahu, quite literally, does not speak for us, and Congress should have never listened, let alone applauded. Shame. More

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      Netanyahu is presiding over a sharp decline in the US’s pro-Israel consensus

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      Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of the House and Senate may look like a political victory: the prime minister of a foreign country speaking before Congress, only interrupted by multiple standing ovations. But the political events serving as a backdrop for the speech reveal Netanyahu’s political career, and the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in the US, in sharp decline.At home in Israel, it’s virtually unthinkable that Netanyahu could have found such a supportive audience. A staggering 72% of Israelis want him to resign over failures that permitted the 7 October attacks by Hamas to succeed.And 72% of Israelis also support a deal to release hostages over the destruction of Hamas. Despite saying he is doing everything he can to “bring all our hostages home”, Netanyahu appeared to outright reject a hostage deal in his speech to Congress, declaring Israel “must retain overriding security control [in Gaza] to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel”, a war goal the Israeli military says is unachievable and terms to which Hamas will not agree.Indeed, blatant falsehoods were scattered throughout his speech. He claimed “practically no civilians were killed in Rafah” (daily reporting shows women and children dead from Israeli air strikes on Rafah and surrounding areas), downplayed the role of Israel in creating famine conditions for much of Gaza’s population, and claimed that Israel helps “keep American boots off the ground while protecting our shared interests in the Middle East”, conveniently omitting the 4,492 US service members who died in the Iraq war, a war Netanyahu lobbied Congress to undertake in 2002.While the speech was Netanyahu’s fourth address to Congress, the political landscape in Washington has shifted beneath his feet, creating a far less welcoming American public than the applause might suggest. Around half of House and Senate Democrats boycotted the speech while thousands of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol building, revealing the steep drop in support for Israel’s war on Gaza over the past nine months.Before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, 38% of voters said they were less likely to vote for him due to his handling of the war on Gaza. “Many core constituencies – including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic party activists – are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza,” said a report from the Century Foundation, the thinktank that commissioned the poll.While sentiments towards Israel are warmer within the Republican party – Israeli flags were visible on the floor of the Republican convention last week and Republican members of Congress led many of the standing ovations for Netanyahu’s speech – that support has increasingly coincided with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans by the world’s richest Israeli, Israeli-US dual national Miriam Adelson, who alongside her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, topped the list of Republican donors since the late 2000s, raising questions about whether support for Israel is an issue of deep concern to the Republican base or simply a transaction required for campaign contributions.The election wins of Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from West Virginia (both Republican critics of US aid to Israel), suggest an appetite, or at least an acceptance, of a more balanced US-Israel relationship within Republican voters.Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, planned before Biden ended his campaign for re-election, is now set against the political uncertainty of how Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will approach the relationship with Israel. The administration of which she is still a part of bled dangerous levels of support from its own base, particularly in vital swing states like Michigan, where 100,000 Arab and Muslim voters expressed their dissatisfaction with Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza by submitting “uncommitted” ballots in their Democratic primary.Pressure is building on the vice-president to distance herself from Biden’s “bearhug” strategy of Netanyahu and utilize the leverage the US holds over Israel: threatening to turn off the spigot of munitions necessary for Israel’s war to drag on.The speech may have looked like a victory for an embattled Israeli prime minister but the real test of Netanyahu’s political gambit will only become clear as Harris sets the foreign policy agenda for her presidential campaign.If the boycott of the speech by Democrats, polling showing dissatisfaction with ongoing support for the war on Gaza, and protesters outside the Capitol were any sign of the political tides within the Democratic party, Harris may conclude that the time has come for greater daylight between the US and Netanyahu, distancing the US from the nearly 40,000 casualties suffered by Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military, and a conditioning of US military aid to Israel on an end to the war on Gaza and Israeli participation in a deal to release hostages held by Hamas. Such a move would cast Netanyahu’s speech as a symbolic, and highly visible, breaking point in the bipartisan US support he has enjoyed for his entire political career.

      Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and investigative journalist at large at Responsible Statecraft More

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      Amid chaos of US politics, Netanyahu finally gets attention he craves in Washington

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      On his third day in Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu finally got the attention he so desperately wanted in the US capital.Republicans and their guests in the House chamber stamped their feet and whistled as a joint session was gaveled into order, while the Democrat lawmakers who chose not to boycott someone whom colleagues had called a “war criminal” looked on in sullen silence. In a 56-minute speech punctuated with 50 rounds of applause, the Israeli prime minister dashed hopes of a quick end to the war in Gaza and dispensed red meat to the Republican faithful, blasting anti-war protest culture and vowing to fight until “total victory”.For two days, Netanyahu had mostly been ignored at the Watergate hotel, passed over for the spectacle of a US political cycle averaging a West Wing season finale a week. Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race amid rumours of his cognitive decline, endorsing the vice-president, Kamala Harris, weeks before the convention and reinvigorating the Democratic party overnight. A bullet had grazed Donald Trump’s ear in an assassination attempt just 11 days ago, sparking comparisons to the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus Christ. America has been living decades in just weeks; was there even room on the cable TV schedule for Netanyahu to deliver another incendiary speech?But the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Republican, had put Netanyahu on the schedule on 24 July and neither the US political tumult nor Biden’s bout of Covid-19, nor a requested international criminal court warrant accusing him of “crimes against humanity” would deter Israel’s prime minister from coming to Washington to make his case before Congress for a record fourth time (once more than Winston Churchill).So when he had his moment, Netanyahu stood up to give a speech filled with verve but absolutely devoid of details: when and how Israel’s war in Gaza would come to an end and the 120 remaining hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October would be brought home.There was a vague reference to a “civilian administration run by Palestinians who do not seek to destroy Israel” after his “total victory”, a “vision for Gaza” that said the strip of land would be “demilitarised and deradicalised”. But Netanyahu gave no vision of how to get there, besides more of the same, which has already left an estimated 39,000 Palestinians dead on top of the 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on 7 October.This was not a speech declaring a ceasefire, a word that was not uttered once by Netanyahu, despite weeks of negotiations with Hamas and the Biden administration’s insistence that a “framework” had already been agreed. Shortly after the speech, a senior administration official conceded there may still be some “very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved”.On the streets outside the Capitol, police deployed teargas and pepper spray as protests descended into melees so confused that anti-Netanyahu protesters from different factions ended up clashing angrily with one another.Despite the violence, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters voiced frustration with the Israeli prime minister and a war that had killed thousands with no resolution in sight.View image in fullscreenJessica Pliska, a pro-Palestinian protester who carried a sign calling Netanyahu “Satanyahu”, said she drove 11 hours from Michigan to demonstrate against his address. “I feel disappointed in our government. The fact that the person perpetrating these war crimes is invited to our Congress is insidious.“I think it’s wonderful that people are boycotting,” she said. “I think it shows a moral imperative among the masses to come out and protest, not only here in the streets but in Congress as well.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral blocks away, Brad Young, a dual US-Israeli citizen from North Carolina, said he was “very much in favour of the Israeli right to exist but [I] believe that the government in place right now is corrupt and not acting in the best interests of Israel or of anyone in the region. It’s outrageous that Bibi [Netanyahu] is here and speaking to Congress when he should be focused on sealing the deal and bringing the hostages home.”When he finally took the rostrum on Thursday, Netanyahu quickly waded knee-deep into the American culture wars that have divided the US ahead of the presidential elections. At times it can feel that US politics has become the world’s politics, particularly when foreign leaders curry favour with Donald Trump and parrot his politics before the vote.Netanyahu used his hour to lambast woke culture and the pro-Palestinian protest movement, echoing the Republican talking points of the moment. Somewhere between calling protesters “Iran’s useful idiots” and saying those holding signs reading “gays for Gaza” might as well call themselves “chickens for KFC”, the Israeli prime minister brought up the North Carolina frat boys who surrounded the US flag during a pro-Palestinian protest at the campus of Chapel Hill UNC.“USA! USA! USA!” his backers in the hall chanted, their shouts echoing off the walls. Netanyahu would be at home at a football match or a stump speech, but his remarks in Congress on Wednesday gave little sign that this war is any closer to coming to an end. More

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      A genocidal war criminal will address Congress. As a congressman, I’m outraged | Jamaal Bowman

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      The United States and our federal government love to portray ourselves as leaders in peace, diplomacy and human rights. In the eyes of the world, we want to be seen as collaborators and coalition-builders, working together to solve problems around the world.The reality in the halls of power is very different.On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu will come to the People’s House to give a joint address before members of Congress, one of the highest honors afforded to foreign leaders. The Israeli prime minister was invited in the midst of what the international court of justice has determined to be a plausible genocide by the Israeli government.We are at a pivotal moment in our democracy and our society where we have to ask ourselves: how do we want to be represented on the global stage? What do we stand for as a nation if we are inviting an accused war criminal to address a joint session of Congress as he inflicts collective punishment on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children? Platforming a war criminal should not be our answer.Last month, I had the opportunity to meet with Sara, a 17-year-old girl from Gaza whose home was bombed by Israeli forces. Her two brothers, Ahmad and Mohamed, were killed, and she suffered deep burns across her entire body. She was unable to leave her house to seek medical treatment for a month because Israeli forces surrounded her home. Luckily, she was able to come to the United States to seek treatment but she is still afraid for the safety of the family she left behind.I have also met with families of Israeli hostages who are worried for the safety of their family members as Netanyahu continues to inflict collective punishment. They are terrified that their loved ones will be killed by Israeli military campaigns like others have.I am disgusted that we are allowing the man who is responsible for ripping families apart and killing Israeli and Palestinian civilians to be given a platform before Congress to try and win support and funding for his indiscriminate bombing campaign.Netanyahu’s record of fascist and genocidal behavior is not new. His initial work to prop up Hamas is responsible for widespread destabilization in Palestine. He has presided over the detainment of Palestinians without due process, the illegal expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the practice of “mowing the lawn”, indiscriminately murdering dozens of Palestinians in horrifying military onslaughts. He has also worked to dismantle the national judiciary so he cannot be held accountable and aligned himself with far-right actors such as Itamar Ben-Gvir who have called for mass displacement of Palestinians.In Israel, thousands of people are protesting against Netanyahu’s handling of the war, which is further putting hostages held in Gaza at risk. They are calling for a ceasefire and negotiations between Israel and Hamas to protect the safety of innocent civilians in Israel and Gaza. On Tuesday, thousands of people will protest outside the Capitol, calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and release of the hostages. The majority of American people and people around the world support this.There is a moral outrage in the American conscience that is not being fully expressed in Congress. Netanyahu’s presence and his joint address are directly undermining the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans who want peace. Instead of joining this collective push, most members of Congress are more focused on institutional norms and their neoliberal approach to foreign policy.Our system is broken if our leaders choose to ignore the will of the people. We should all be outraged about the murder of children, whether at home or abroad. We should all be yelling in the halls of Congress until our leaders have no choice but to listen.We need a permanent ceasefire and release of the hostages. We need a world where people understand that criticism of a state or a leader does not make you antisemitic. We need a paradigm shift on how we approach the issue of Israel and Palestine. It’s time to re-evaluate where we stand as a democracy and a society and re-examine our alignment and support for Netanyahu and his genocidal government because it is outrageous. For hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and for our democracy as a whole, the future depends on it.

      Jamaal Bowman is the United States representative for New York’s 16th congressional district since 2021 More

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      Why did Delta Air Lines tweet that the Palestinian flag is ‘terrifying’? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      There’s been a huge increase in scary airline incidents recently. Last week, there was yet another one when passengers on a Delta flight from Boston to West Palm Beach experienced extreme turbulence. No, this wasn’t a Boeing-related safety glitch; it was far more serious than that. A flight attendant was wearing a tiny Palestine flag pin on his uniform.Terrifying, right? Just unbelievable that, nine months into Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, someone might feel the urge to publicly express solidarity with a group of people who are being bombed into oblivion. Absolutely mind-boggling that someone might feel moved by the fact that, according to United Nations rights experts, Israel has carried out a “targeted starvation campaign” in Gaza and babies are dying of malnutrition. Really chilling that an American felt upset by their taxpayer money being used to fund an assault which is killing civilians at a scale and pace many experts have called “unprecedented”.Luckily there was a brave passenger on the plane to call this foolishness out. Someone snapped a photo of the flight attendant and posted it on social media. Various anti-Palestinian accounts quickly mobilized to uncover the man’s identity and pressure Delta to get him fired. A Twitter account called iliketeslas then found another picture of a Delta employee wearing a Palestine flag and tweeted: “imagine getting into a @Delta flight and seeing workers with Hamas badges in the air. What do you do?”Well, personally, the first thing I’d do is explain to the person complaining that the Palestinian flag is not a “Hamas badge”. But I’m not the person manning Delta’s official Twitter/X account. Instead, that person replied from Delta’s official X account: “I hear you and I’d be terrified as well, personally. Our employees reflect our culture and we do not take it lightly when our policy is not being followed.”Let me just spell that out. Someone on Delta’s communication team thinks the Palestinian flag is terrifying and had no problem tweeting that out from the company’s official @Delta account.And this, by the way, isn’t the first time that Delta has been in the news for cracking down on pro-Palestinian messages. This week the non-profit news organization Truthout published a piece alleging that an anti-Zionist Jewish American man called Louie Siegel was told to remove a pro-ceasefire T-shirt during a recent Delta Air Lines flight from São Paulo to Chicago. The T-shirt said “Not in Our Name” on the front side and “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” on the back. Real extremist stuff, eh? Siegel had to cover it up to stay on the plane and was warned he would be put on a no-fly list if he didn’t comply.Delta’s tweet about the terrifying Palestinian flag, by the way, was quickly deleted. But a proper apology from the airline hasn’t been forthcoming. “Delta removed a mistakenly posted comment on X Tuesday because it was not in line with our values and our mission to connect the world,” a Delta spokesperson told me via email on Thursday. “The team member responsible for the post has been counseled and no longer supports Delta’s social channels. We apologize for this error.”Delta’s spokesperson also clarified that neither flight attendant was fired for wearing the pins and said they’d been offered support. They added: “However, as of [Thursday], Delta is shifting its pin allowance policy effective July 15. Beginning then, only US flags will be permitted to be worn on uniforms. Previously, pins representing countries/nationalities of the world had been permitted.”While it’s encouraging that Delta’s flight attendants haven’t been terminated for the crime of wearing a Palestinian flag pin, minimizing this incident as an “error” is insulting. Writing an important email that says “I hope you like tit!” instead of “I hope you like it!” (which is something I have unfortunately done) is what you call an error. Using an official corporate social media account to call the Palestinian flag terrifying, on the other hand, is a hell of a lot more than that.Rather, it’s yet another example of just how widespread and normalized anti-Palestinian bigotry has become in the US. Indeed, racism towards Palestinians is so acceptable that when Donald Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur against Joe Biden in the recent debate, there was barely any outrage. Biden certainly didn’t call Trump out on his racism.Gaza is hell on earth at the moment. Perhaps there will be a ceasefire at one point, but Gaza will never be the same. According to a recent piece by the Israeli paper Haaretz, “The IDF has taken control of 26% of the Gaza Strip … [and] the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern part of the Strip is becoming permanent. This, an IDF soldier told Haaretz, is ‘an effort at prolonged occupation’.”Meanwhile Israel is loudly and proudly annexing the occupied West Bank, recently approving the largest seizure of land in more than three decades, according to a report by an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog.We are witnessing ethnic cleansing and mass murder in real time and yet speaking out about these horrors – doing something as little as wearing a Palestinian pin in public – puts you at risk of being smeared, harassed and fired from your job. It’s become difficult to even speak about the death toll in Gaza now. The House recently passed an amendment preventing the state department from citing the Gaza health ministry’s death toll statistics for the war. That is the only official entity tracking death data in Gaza; banning these figures effectively halts any conversation about the death toll.“They want to erase the Palestinians who are living,” said Representative Rashida Tlaib in response to the amendment, “and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead.” As Tlaib says, there is a widespread effort to “dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence”. It’s this that should terrify you. Not a tiny Palestinian flag.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      US Congress faces growing calls to withdraw Netanyahu invitation: ‘a terrible mistake’

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      A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.“Congress has made a terrible mistake. Mr Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington will not represent the State of Israel and its citizens, and it will reward his scandalous and destructive conduct toward our country,” the article’s six authors argue in a blistering critique that also accuses the Israeli prime minister of failing to secure the release of scores of hostages taken in last year’s attack and still held captive.The article’s authors were Ehud Barak, a former prime minister; Tamir Pardo, an ex-director of Mossad; David Harel, the president of Israel’s academy of sciences and humanities; the novelist David Grossman; Talia Sasson, a former director in the state attorney’s office; and Aaron Ciechanover, a Nobel prize-winning chemist.Their august status and biting criticism will reinforce the opposition of many Democrats to Netanyahu’s appearance before a joint session on Capitol Hill on 24 July – a sentiment strengthened by his accusation last week that the Biden administration is hampering Israel’s war effort by deliberately withholding weapons, a charge the White House denies.The invitation was originally extended by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and endorsed by Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, and the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, despite the latter’s earlier denunciation of Netanyahu and call for fresh Israeli elections.Several Democrats have said they will boycott Netanyahu’s congressional appearance, most notably Bernie Sanders, the leftwing senator for Vermont, who has branded the prime minister “a war criminal”.Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat in the House rules committee, has called the invitation to Netanyahu “deeply troubling” and also vowed to stay away. Other critical Democrats have included former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.In comments that will be grist to the Democrats’ mill, the six Israelis write: “Inviting Mr Netanyahu will reward his contempt for US efforts to establish a peace plan, allow more aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza and do a better job of sparing civilians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Time and again, he has rejected President Biden’s plan to remove Hamas from power in Gaza through the establishment of a peacekeeping force.”Setting out the domestic opposition to Netanyahu among Israelis, they add in a scathing conclusion: “Giving Mr Netanyahu the stage in Washington will all but dismiss the rage and pain of his people, as expressed in the demonstrations throughout the country. American lawmakers should not let that happen. They should ask Mr Netanyahu to stay home.” More

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      Accusations fly as pro-Israel groups spend big to oust progressive House Democrat

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      It was one of the hottest days of the year in New York City on Saturday – but as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the stage in the Bronx, you wouldn’t know it.At a rally to support Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democrat facing a primary campaign that has seen pro-Israel lobbying groups pump more than $15m into the race, Ocasio-Cortez was amped up.Bowman’s fellow progressive member of Congress – one of America’s most recognizable politicians – sprinted on to the stage and jumped around to a Cardi B track, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd.“Let’s go, Bronx!” she shouted.“Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to take this borough back? Are you ready to win this country back? Are you ready to fight for peace on earth and ceasefire in Gaza?”The reception from the crowd of more than 1,000 people suggested that the crowd was very ready.Voters go to the polls in New York’s 16th district on Tuesday, in what has become the most expensive House primary in US history. The race between Bowman and his challenger, George Latimer, has been ugly: beset by accusations of antisemitism and racism. Of the almost $23m that has been spent on ads so far, more than $15m has come from pro-Israel groups, in a bid to oust the Democratic incumbent, Jamaal Bowman.Bowman has represented the district in the House of Representatives since 2020, one of a wave of progressive Democrats who have won victories in recent years. Popular among young Democrats and left-leaning voters, the 48-year-old became a high profile member of the Squad – a group of progressive politicians who include Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib – after he arrived in DC.But with greater attention comes greater vulnerability. Bowman has been one of the few Democrats to consistently criticize Israel since it began its war in Gaza, accusing the country of committing genocide and calling for the Joe Biden White House to “stop all funding” to Israel. That has attracted the attention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, a formidable force in US politics not afraid to spend millions to unseat candidates it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.Bowman, dressed in a bright yellow T-shirt, acknowledged the challenge at the rally, held at St Mary’s Park in the south Bronx.Introduced by Ocasio-Cortez, he rapped along to the Wu-Tang Clan track Triumph to roars of appreciation.“This is the birthplace of hip-hop. I am the hip-hop congressman,” he announced.View image in fullscreenIt was clear that this was a rally designed to rouse the faithful, with Bowman urging supporters to canvas and win votes ahead of Tuesday’s vote, before turning to Aipac.“We are gonna show fucking Aipac the power of the motherfucking south Bronx,” Bowman said.“People ask me why I got a foul mouth. What am I supposed to do? You coming after me, you coming after my family, you coming after my children, I’m not supposed to fight back?“We’re gonna show them who the fuck we are.”Since the start of the primary, the United Democracy Project (UDP), a Super Pac connected with Aipac, has spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, who is facing a primary challenge from Latimer, a pro-Israel Democrat. DMFI Pac, another pro-Israel group, has spent more than $1m to support Latimer and unseat Bowman, helping to turn the race into an unprecedentedly expensive contest.Bowman, a former school principal in the Bronx, unseated the incumbent Democrat Eliot Engel in 2020, in what was seen as a big win for the progressive wing of the party.But in Latimer, he faces an opponent with more than three decades of experience in New York politics.At 70, and with a list of endorsements from centrist Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Latimer is far from the exciting prospect Bowman was four years ago. He is, however, a vocal advocate for Israel – in the final debate between the pair he declined to criticize Israel, something Biden has previously done – who visited the country before launching his campaign against Bowman in December. He has won the support of Aipac, and was endorsed by the Jewish Democratic Council of America in March.Ironically, given Aipac’s campaign, Bowman angered some on the left during his first year in office by voting in favor of the US giving $1bn to Israel for the country to fund its Iron Dome defense system. But after Hamas militants killed almost 1,200 people on 7 October, to which Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and led to charges of genocide in the international court of justice, Bowman has found himself under fire.View image in fullscreenIn the weeks following the attack Bowman was denounced by some Jewish leaders in his district for condemning the Hamas attack and Israel’s response. He drew further ire in late October, when he was one of only 10 members of the House to vote against a resolution to codify support for Israel while stating that the House “condemns Hamas’s brutal war against Israel”.Other “no” votes included Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman from Michigan, and Ilhan Omar, who was elected in Minnesota in 2018. Tlaib and Omar have been more outspoken in their criticism of Israel than Bowman – last year Tlaib was censured by the House after she defended the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which is seen by some as antisemitic. Aipac has spent some money opposing both women, but it is NY-16 where the pro-Israel organization has really gone all out, breaking all its previous records.Aipac has said it will spend $100m this year on ousting politicians it deems to be anti-Israel. The American electoral system allows Super Pacs to dump as much cash as they want into any election with a few restrictions, and in NY-16, spending has been prodigious.The result has been visible for anyone with a television in the district, which covers part of the Bronx in New York City and half of Westchester county, just to the north.Much of the money has been spent on attacking Bowman. The UDP has invested $14.5m in the race – $9.8m of which has gone towards knocking Bowman, and just $4.8m on promoting Latimer.An ad from late May featured the son of Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, Nobel winner and staunch Israel supporter, who died in 2016.“My father taught me that antisemitism begins with lies and conspiracy theories, and it ends with violence that consumes any society that tolerates it,” Elisha Wiesel says in the ad. “Will you make your voice heard? Will you confront Jamaal Bowman’s lies and conspiracy theories, or will you sit by silently?”The ad did not reference any specific conspiracy theory, but may have reminded some viewers of Bowman’s comments in November, when he said reports of Hamas committing rapes during the October 7 attack were “propaganda”. Bowman has since apologized.Aipac has been around since the 1950s, and spent decades as a fairly typical lobbying firm, chipping away at politicians behind the scenes, trying to win favorable policies and deals for Israel.But in 2021 Aipac announced that it had formed a political action committee, known as Aipac Pac, and a Super Pac, the UDP. Super Pacs can receive limitless money in donations, and spend it on any political races they like, as long as they do so without coordinating with campaigns. Since a contentious supreme court decision legalized Super Pacs in 2010, they have become extremely powerful – across 2023 and 2024, Super Pacs in the US raised nearly $1.5bn in donations, according to Open Secrets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt is the UDP that has been doing most of the heavy lifting as Aipac attempts to defeat Bowman, spending nearly $15m in this district of 756,711 people. With Bowman’s district considered a safe Democratic seat, it would be a lucrative prize for Latimer, and for pro-Israel advocates.With a diverse population including large numbers of Black, Hispanic and Jewish voters, allegations of racism and antisemitism have been to the fore.Bowman has suggested Latimer’s campaign has darkened his skin in campaign literature, and has accused Latimer of pushing the “angry black man” stereotype. In the final debate between the pair on Tuesday, Bowman accused Latimer of dragging his feet on desegregation as Westchester county executive. Latimer, who has claimed Bowman has an “ethnic benefit”, said Bowman has “cornered the market on lies”.Latimer was also accused by Bowman of relying on Republican money, pointing to donors who have contributed to Latimer and the Republican candidate who ran to replace the shamed fantasist George Santos in Long Island, New York.Latimer, with $5.8m in fundraising, may have the big money from Aipac, and those Republican donors, but Bowman has raised plenty of cash of his own. Since the start of his campaign, Bowman has raised $4.3m and has support on the ground from progressive groups, including Justice Democrats, a progressive organization which backed his campaign in 2020 and has spent $1.3m to support Bowman this election cycle.Local polling is notoriously unreliable, but one recent survey found Bowman trailing Latimer by 17 points among likely Democratic primary voters – although 21% of respondents were undecided.If Bowman is defeated, there is a potential impact beyond just politics in the Middle East. Some younger, progressive Democrats feel that the primary campaigns against Bowman and other Squad members could drive young voters away from the Democratic party.“We believe that the Squad is just the start of our voice being truly represented in the halls of Congress,” said Ella Webber, an activist with Protect our Power, an organization which seeks to keep progressive Democrats in Congress and has spent time campaigning in Bowman’s district.“The threat of them not winning is gen Z as a whole continues to lose faith in our political process. That’s definitely not what we want, and I don’t think that’s what the Democratic party wants.”At the rally on Saturday, others were also worried about what the loss of a progressive Democrat could mean.“I’m a transgender woman, and I’m really existentially terrified about the rise of the far right in America,” said Genevieve Rand, 27.“And Jamal Bowman’s race is the frontlines of that fight in this country right now. And so it’s really, really important to me that he wins so that the far right can’t buy an election and kick out somebody who stands for peace and for life.”While Latimer would baulk at the suggestion that he is far right, Rand argued that the Republican party “is captured by the far right”.“That’s who controls the Republican party and whoever is taking their donations is complicit with that,” she said.Pro-Israel spending has come to define the race, but there have been unforced errors from Bowman. In September he was criticized after pulling a fire alarm before a crucial House vote; Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, the maximum applicable under Washington DC law. Early this year the Daily Beast reported that Bowman had touted 9/11 conspiracy theories on a since-deleted blogpost.View image in fullscreenIn a poem posted in 2011, Bowman wrote about world events and the controversial Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election, before riffing on 9/11.“2001/Planes used as missiles/Target: The Twin Towers,” Bowman wrote.“Later in the day/Building 7/Also Collaspsed [sic]/Hmm…/Multiple explosions/Heard before/And during the collapse/Hmm…”The passage makes reference to the debunked conspiracy theory that Building 7 at the site of the World Trade Center was downed in a controlled demolition, rather than collapsing as a result of the plane crashes into the Twin Towers.Bowman apologized, sort of, after the Daily Beast unearthed the post, saying he had merely “processed my thoughts in a personal blog that few people ever read”.“Having since learned how misinformation spreads, I regret posting anything about any of these people,” Bowman said in a statement.There was only support for the congressman on Saturday, however – aside from a small group of pro-Palestine protesters outside the rally. The protesters – somewhat ironically given Aipac’s campaign – accused Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive US senator Bernie Sanders, who appeared with Bowman on stage, of being soft on Israel.Some attendees clustered under trees to avoid the heat that was blasting New York City. Others braved the scorching temperatures in the park’s concrete amphitheater. Some waved “Re-elect Bowman” banners, others held placards that said “For the many, not the money”, while one group waved signs that said “Jews for Jamaal” as Bowman launched an attack on Aipac, which suggested he will not soften his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza any time soon.“Aipac is scared to death. That is why they are spending records amounts of money in this race – because they are afraid. They have already lost because the district, the American people and the world are with us,” Bowman said.“They are in this race because we called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and we are going to keep calling for a permanent ceasefire.“We are not going to stand silent while US tax dollars kills babies, and women, and children. My opponent supports genocide. My opponent and Aipac are the ones destroying our democracy, and it is on all of us to save our democracy.”Additional reporting by Will Craft More

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      White House disputes Netanyahu’s claim that US is withholding weapons from Israel

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      The Biden administration has reacted furiously to criticisms by Benjamin Netanyahu that the US is holding back weapons and ammunition from Israel in its war in Gaza, reportedly cancelling a high-level meeting with Israeli officials on Iran in retaliation.Netanyahu made the claims of a supposedly deliberate weapons delay in a video posted on X in which he implied that Israel’s ability to prevail in the nine-month war with Hamas was being hampered as a result.Speaking to the camera in English, Netanyahu said he had expressed gratitude in a recent meeting with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, for American support since last October’s attack on Israel by Hamas, which killed about 1,200 and saw another 250 taken hostage.“But I also said something else,” he said. “I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel – Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.”Invoking Winston Churchill, Netanyahu continued: “During world war two, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools, and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”The broadside appeared to blindside US officials. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “We genuinely don’t know what he is talking about.”At a later news conference, Blinken said that the only delayed weapons were 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had ordered to put under review because of concerns over an Israeli plan for an incursion into Rafah in southern Gaza, where up to 1 million people are sheltering.“That remains under review. But everything else is moving as it normally would,” said Blinken.The Biden administration finally won congressional approval for a $14bn military aid package for Israel in April after it was held up for months by the House of Representatives. A separate $15bn sale of US F15 aircraft is also set to move forward.Biden has pressed forward with aid despite opposition from within his own Democratic party, where progressives have accused Israel of committing genocide in a war that has now killed more than 37,000 Palestinians.Senior administration officials were said to be angry behind the scenes. Axios, citing two unnamed sources, reported that a bilateral meeting scheduled for 20 June had been called off to send Netanyahu a signal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe report said the US envoy to Israel, Amos Hochstein, had delivered the message to the prime minister personally, telling him that his accusation was “inaccurate and out of line”.“This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts,” Axios quoted one American official as saying.A spokesperson for the White House national security council did not confirm the cancellation but amplified the perplexity over Netanyahu’s video.“We have been working to find a time to schedule the next SDG [sustainable development goals] that accounts for the travel and availability of principals, but have not yet fully finalized the details, so nothing has been cancelled,” the spokesperson, Eduardo Maia Silva, said in an email.“As we said in the briefing yesterday, we have no idea what the prime minister is talking about, but that’s not a reason for rescheduling a meeting.”Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington in late July to address a joint session of Congress, in response to an invitation by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a close ally of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. More